Some of my photos related to undocumented immigration in the US. Most of these photos were made in the early 2000s.

The United States Department of State downgraded Thailand to the lowest rank in its Trafficking in Persons (TiP) report. Thailand is now ranked with North Korea, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan or Saudi Arabia in the way it treats workers and protects them from abuse. I've been photographing immigration in Thailand since 2009. These are some of the photos.

A small group of civil rights supporters were arrested by Arizona State Capitol Police Thursday when the protesters tried to block access to the Attorney General's office. They were protesting Attorney General Tom Horne's decision to sue community colleges to force the colleges to charge "DREAMERS" out of state tuition even if they otherwise qualify for in state tuition.

About 100 members of the Communications Workers of America picketed the CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) offices. The CWA and CenturyLink are in contract negotiations. The negotiations cover more than 15,000 workers across the western United States. Key issues include outsourcing and proposed cuts to retiree health benefits.

Hundreds of people lined up at Central High School in Phoenix to complete their paperwork to apply for "Deferred Action" status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program announced by President Obama in June. Volunteers and lawyers specialized in immigration law helped the immigrants complete the required paperwork. Under the program, the children of undocumented immigrants brought to the US before they turned 16 years old would not be subject to deportation if they meet a predetermined set of conditions.

A handful of protesters waited outside the Sandra Day O'Connor Courthouse in Phoenix Wednesday while lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) sparred with lawyers from Maricopa County and the State of Arizona over the constitutionality of section 2B of SB 1070, Arizona's tough anti-immigrant law.

More than 1000 people attended a series of 90 minute workshops in Phoenix Saturday on the "deferred action" announced by President Obama in June. Under the plan, young people brought to the US without papers, would under certain circumstances, not be subject to deportation. The plan mirrors some aspects the DREAM Act (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors), that immigration advocates have sought for years. The workshops were sponsored by No DREAM Deferred Coalition.

About 200 people, mostly DREAM Act (an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) students and their family members, marched on the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix Wednesday after Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said the state of Arizona will not give DREAM Act students any state services, including driver's licenses or tuition breaks on state universities and schools. Brewer has been a critic of President Obama's plan to defer deportations of certain undocumented young people.

One week after a gunman killed six people and wounded four others, Sikhs in Phoenix gathered at their temple for their Sunday services.

Hundreds of Hindus came to Ekta Temple in Central Phoenix Friday to celebrate Janmashtami, the Hindu holy day that celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna. Hindu communities around the world celebrate the holy day.

The Tolleson food bank has been operating for more than 20 years. It used to serve mostly the families of migrant farm workers that worked the fields around Tolleson but in the early 2000's many of the farms were sold to real estate developers. Now the food bank serves both farm worker families and people who lost their homes in the real estate crash, that his Phoenix suburbs especially hard. More than 150 families a day are helped by the Tolleson food bank, an increase of more than 50% in the last five years.

The lawsuit filed by the ACLU and MALDEF against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio started in US federal court Thursday. A handful of civil rights activists held a vigil at the State Capitol and picketed the front of the courthouse.

The Fiesta of Independence is the largest naturalization ceremony in Phoenix. Each year, on the 4th of July, hundreds of new citizens are welcomed to the United States at the ceremony, held in the gym of South Mountain Community College. This year more 250 people from 62 countries became citizens.

About 100 people picketed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Offices on Central Ave in Phoenix Monday. The protest was timed to coincide with the Supreme Court's ruling on SB1070, but since the court overturned most of the SB1070, and the Obama administration stripped all Arizona law enforcement agencies of immigration enforcement powers, the protesters rallied against the Obama administration's ongoing deportation of criminal immigrants.

The US Supreme Court ruled Monday on SB1070, overturning a huge portion of Arizona's tough anti-immigration law. They narrowly let stand a small part of the law, allowing law enforcement to check the immigration status of people they come into contact with, but had reservations about how it would be implemented. Latino leaders and civil rights advocates responded with cautious optimism to SCOTUS' ruling.

The Unitarian Universalists are in Phoenix for their annual convention. This year they put a dose of social activism on their agenda when they decided to protest conditions at "Tent City," the sprawling outdoor jail run by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The tents, opened in the early 1990s to cheaply add capacity to the county jail system, have been a lightning rod for controversy from day one. Critics call them inhumane. The Sheriff says if tents are good enough for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're good enough for criminals. The Unitarians' protest, called a National Day of Witness, was coordinated with Puente AZ, a Phoenix civil rights organization. The Unitarians came to the tents in a big fleet of chartered yellow school buses. They filed off the buses singing hymns and civil rights era protest songs and clutching small electric candles. About 2000 people attended the protest, which was peaceful.

The wait continues at the Arizona State Capitol for the Supreme Court to rule in US v. Arizona. The US Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on SB 1070, the tough (and controversial) anti-illegal immigration law Arizona enacted in 2010. Many in the Latino community fear the law will codify racial profiling and lead to more discrimination against Hispanics. A small group of Latino human rights activists have been holding regular prayer vigils at the State Capitol.

Phoenix' legendary summer heat - months with the daily high above 105 and daily lows that don't dip below 90 - are brutal for anyone who has to spend time outdoors. The weather though is especially hard on the homeless and street people, who can't get into air conditioning to escape the heat and frequently don't have access to cold, clean drinking water. Compounding the problem is that the homeless frequently have other health issues made worse by the heat. Several civil society groups, like "I Will Listen" help the homeless by bringing them fresh food, cold water and other beverages. These photos were made at an "I Will Listen" outreach in central Phoenix Wednesday.

The US Supreme Court is expected to rule very soon on SB 1070, the tough (and controversial) anti-illegal immigration law Arizona enacted in 2010. Many in the Latino community fear the law will codify racial profiling and lead to more discrimination against Hispanics. A small group of Latino human rights activists have been holding regular prayer vigils at the State Capitol.

In many ways, Ibrahim Swara-Dahab, a 57 year old refugee from Somalia, is living the American dream. He came to this country as a virtually penniless refugee, he found a niche to work in and is succeeding in that niche. With the help of the International Rescue Committee in Phoenix, he started a halal goat and sheep butchering operation that caters to others in the refugee community. He has a small place on the Gila Indian Community southwest of Phoenix where he butchers sheep and goats to order and in the halal tradition, a service not readily available at the mainstream grocery stores in the Phoenix area.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, also called UAVs or Drones, became famous for their lethal robotic airstrikes against terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and other third world trouble spots. But drones, specifically the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, popularly called the Predator, are being used for aerial surveillance along the US Mexico border. These photos were made when US Customs and Border Protection rolled the Predators out for the first time.

The constitutionality of Arizona's tough anti-illegal immigration law, SB1070, was heard by the US Supreme Court Wednesday April 25. Several hundred people, most opposed to the law, came to the State Capitol in Phoenix to voice their unhappiness with the law and to pray that it would be overturned.

Marty Atencio died in a Phoenix hospital on Dec 20, 2011. He was arrested by Phoenix police a few days earlier after he exhibited "bizarre" behavior on the street. He was booked into the Maricopa County Jail. During the booking process he was tackled by Maricopa County Detention Officers and repeatedly hit was a Taser stun gun and then locked in a special holding cell called a "safe call." He was later found unconscious in the cell and transferred to a hospital, where he died four days later. An autopsy showed no signs of illegal drugs or intoxication and a video from the jail showed that Atencio was not violent in the jail. His family has hired a lawyer and may sue the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, which administers the jail. Thursday night a handful people gathered at the jail held a vigil and silently mourned Atencio's death.

About 300 people marched through downtown Phoenix Thursday night in a silent candle lit procession to protest the way the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, has conducted sexual assault and rape investigations. Two recent media reports, one by the East Valley Tribune, a newspaper in Mesa, AZ, and one by the Associated Press, concluded that the Sheriff's department has bungled more than 430 rape investigations. This comes on top of a US Department of Justice report that cited evidence of wide spread racial profiling and the denial of prisoners' constitutionally guaranteed civil rights in the jails by the sheriff's department. The DoJ report was highly critical of Sheriff Arpaio and the Sheriff's Department.

I've been photographing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his jails for about 10 years. The Sheriff has been a lightning rod for controversy in the state of Arizona for almost his entire tenure. He is one of the most popular politicians and most powerful Republicans in the state. He campaigns as a tough, no nonsense lawman and claims the nickname of "America's Toughest Sheriff." But human rights activists and many on the left complain that the Sheriff and his department routinely deny people their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights, engages in racial profiling and uses his office to intimidate political opponents. On Dec. 15, 2011, the US Department of Justice issued a report highly critical of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department and the Sheriff's jails and supported many of his opponents' claims. The DOJ said the Sheriff's Dept. engages in widespread discrimination against Latinos during traffic stops and immigration enforcement, violates the rights of Spanish speaking prisoners in the jails and retaliates against the Sheriff's political opponents. These are some of the photos I've made of the Sheriff's operations over the years.

About 300 people picketed the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Phoenix, AZ, Wednesday, Nov 30, to protest the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting. Many of the protesters were veterans of the Occupy movement and stressed peaceful protest, but there were also some anarchists mixed in the crowd who confronted police. Phoenix police responded by pepper spraying the crowd and arresting several people.

Phoenix residents joined the Occupy movement last weekend. The protests started with a march through downtown Friday night and continued with a series of protests at Cesar Chavez Plaza between the courthouse and city hall downtown. Protesters now "Occupy" the Plaza.

September 11, 2001 changed America and the world. Terrorists crashed airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC. Passengers on a fourth hijacked plane, fought back and crashed the plane, widely thought to be bound for the White House, into the ground in Shanksville, PA. That day led directly to America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and changed the way we fly and look at life. That day is seared into the national psyche. Like the assassination of President John Kennedy and the Moon Landing, September 11 is a part of the national consciousness. People remember where they were and what they were doing when those airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. I flew to New York on one of the first commercial flights into La Guardia airport the day it reopened and made these photos in the following days.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB1070 on Apr 23, 2010. In the year since the state has been polarized by those who support the bill and those who say it codifies racism. On April 23, 2011, about 500 supporters of immigrants' rights marched from downtown Phoenix to the State Capitol to show that opposition is still alive and strong.

The Arizona State Legislature, led by the State Senate is debating the 14th Amendment, which would bar US citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States. The bill has broad support among Republicans, who are the majority party, in the state legislature but not among Democrats. The law is also very unpopular in the state's Latino and immigrant communities.

About 200 people, from a variety of backgrounds, came to central Tempe Monday night to show their support for the pro-democracy protestors in Egypt (and Tunisia and Palestine and Yemen).

The US Senate defeated the DREAM Act Saturday, Dec. 18, setting back the Obama administration's hope for comprehensive immigration reform. Sunday night immigration activists and supporters of the DREAM Act, met in a small church in central Phoenix for a prayer service in support of the Act, which would have put in place a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the US by their parents when they were children. About 100 people attended the service. Speakers said that although the DREAM Act was defeated, it marked the beginning of the struggle not the end.

Cholera is an ancient disease spread by contaminated water and poor hygiene. It's endemic in Africa and South Asia. It's frequently fatal and can kill within hours of onset. Symptoms include uncontrolled vomiting and diarrhea, death is brought on by the body's sudden dehydration. The cure is relatively simple: massive rehydration of the body through IVs. Cholera hasn't been seen in Haiti in over 100 years. In November, a small outbreak started in the north, near a Nepali UN Peacekeeper base. Disease detectives link the strain to a strain endemic in Nepal but hesitate to say the Nepalis brought cholera to Haiti. Within weeks it spread across the country and is now spreading through the slums of Port-au-Prince. These photos were made in Port-au-Prince in mid November.

Crime has steadily dropped in Phoenix over the past few years, in line with national trends. The latest number released this month showed Phoenix reported fewer homicides, rapes, robberies, thefts in 2010 despite the bad economy. The department says that at least part of the credit for the crime drop is attributable to the efforts of the Major Offenders Bureau, an elite squad of detectives that spends its days tracking the down the worst of the criminals living in Phoenix and makes anywhere from four to eight felony arrests every day. (THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR SALE OR REUSE)

Arizona's tough new anti-immigration law, SB 1070, goes into effect on July 29. It requires local police, who have had 90 minutes of immigration law training, to check the immigration status of anyone they have probable cause to believe may be in the US illegally. Some Arizona law enforcement agencies, like the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, are promising to vigorously enforce the new law. Hundreds, some say thousands, of Latinos who are in the Arizona illegally, have left the state in the last three months. Many businesses that cater to this community have suffered, none more so than El Gran Mercado (The Big Market), a flea market that caters to Mexicans and others from Latin America. The once bustling Mercado is now more like a ghost town. Some say business is down more than 60% since last year.

Rice is an integral part of the Balinese culture. The rituals of the cycle of planting, maintaining, irrigating, and harvesting rice enrich the cultural life of Bali beyond a single staple can ever hope to do.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is proud of his tough, no nonsense, reputation as "America's Toughest Sheriff." On his way to earning that title he's created three chain gangs. One men's, one women's and one juvenile. He says it's proof that he's "an equal opportunity incarcerator." The chain gangs do a variety of public service tasks, like cleaning up vacant lots. But their most famous task is burying the poor of Maricopa County. On alternating weeks, the men's and women's chain gangs go out to White Tanks Cemetery west of Phoenix and inter the homeless and indigent who die in the county in what has become Maricopa County's "potter's field." This is a selection of photos I've made of the Sheriff's chain gangs. There are more photos in the archives.

Iraqis are voting in their national parliamentary elections this weekend. In the United States, Iraqis can vote in just eight cities, one of them being Phoenix, Arizona. More than 6,000 Iraqis from several US states are expected to vote in Phoenix. These photos were made at the Iraqi polling place in Phoenix.

People in the developed world don't put much thought into where their food comes from. For most of us it's a simple matter of going to the grocery store, corner convenience store or a restaurant and choosing what we want. We've lost sight of the amazing infrastructure that gets the food from the field to the table and the labor that goes into making sure we're well fed. I've been photographing the food chain for more than 25 years, from rural Minnesota to the ranches of Montana and rice paddies of Asia. These are the more recent photos from that body of work.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has gotten national attention for his high profile "crime suppression" sweeps which he uses as anti-immigrant sweeps, flooding Hispanic neighborhoods looking for undocumented immigrants. Some in Maricopa County praise the sheriff for the sweeps. Others in the county, including the mayor of Phoenix, condemn him for the sweeps, calling them racist and racial profiling. The sweeps have also gotten lots of national attention, including the attention of civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton. Rev. Sharpton came to Phoenix this week to protest the sweeps and join the chorus of voices condemning the sweeps. There were demonstrations against Sharpton and Arpaio at their respective venues during Sharpton's visit.

Laos is a Buddhist nation. In the years following the Pathet Lao victory, Buddhism and the Buddhist clergy suffered persecution. But in the last 10 years there has been a renaissance. People are back in the temples, the clergy is growing again, old temples are being renovated and new ones being built.

I've been documenting immigration for years, from illegal or undocumented immigrants, to citizenship ceremonies to the impact of immigration on communities in Mexico. I've photographed immigration stories in Mexico, the US, Guatemala, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and beyond.

The Navajo Nation is the largest Indian Reservation in the United States. It encompasses parts of three of the most arid states in the US; Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Water is essential for life, yet despite the presence of major rivers like the Colorado and San Juan on the reservation, the Navajos have never been able to get enough of it to meet their needs. Thousand of Navajo have to haul water, at great expense, from distant wells to their homes. A Federal study showed that the total cost of hauling water was about $113 per 1,000 gallons. A Phoenix household, in comparison, pays just $5 a month for up to 7,400 gallons of water. The lack of water on the reservation means the Navajo are among the most miserly users of water in the United States. Families that have to buy or haul water use only about 15 gallons of water per day per person. In Phoenix, by comparison, the average water use is about 170 gallons per day. These photos, and others from this story, are available from ZUMA Press.

Most people don't think about what happens to their trash. Toss it into the bin and walk away. But there's a whole industry built around handling the detritus of society. In the hygiene obsessed United States, trash is processed in clean factory settings. But even in the US, the people who do the work are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, frequently immigrants. In Mexico, where the workers are controlled by a mafia like syndicate, trash workers are also immigrants -- in Mexico City immigrants from the countryside, in southern Mexico, immigrants from Guatemala. In Mae Sot, Thailand, the workers are undocumented immigrants from Burma.

Nearly 30 years after the Khmer Rouge were chased from power in Cambodia, the tiny nation is still awash in landmines, especially along the Thai border. The United Nations and several Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are helping Cambodians recover from landmine injuries and defuse the mines. For more photos, search my archive using keyword: landmines.

Mexico's coffee industry has been crippled by low global prices for coffee, even as demand has skyrocketed. Mexican coffee has never had the caché of Kona (Hawaii) or Blue Mountain (Jamaica) or the commercial success of Colombian. But in the last few years, as cheap coffee from Vietnam and Brazil has flooded the market Mexican growers have found it hard to hang on. To see more photos from the Mexican coffee industry search my archive using keywords: coffee or Tapachula.

Celestial marriage, what members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, call polygamy, is a central tenet of their faith. They split from the mainstream LDS (Mormon) church after the Mormons banned polygamy in the late 1890's. Members of the FLDS live in a remote enclave on the Arizona/Utah state line in the twin towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT. They've tried to stay out of the limelight, but what they consider persecution from state and federal authorities have kept them in the spotlight. More photos of the Jessop family in Colorado City/Hildale are available from my archive. Do a keyword search: Jessop on my archive to see more.

People are on the move. Driven by economic desperation, Mexicans are heading to the US looking for better jobs. Guatemalans and Hondurans are going to Mexico and Burmese are moving to Thailand. It's become a global phenomenon. I started photographing immigration in 1995. Since then, I've covered immigration issues in the US, Mexico and Thailand. These are a few of the photos. Contact me or ZUMA Press if you are interested in these or other photos related to the immigration issue. Photos that are not licensed for online sale are available from ZUMA.

Travel photography, photojournalism and reportage. I have pictures from Southeast Asia, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Switzerland, Istanbul and the American Southwest. If you see something you like and it's not licensed for online sale, it's available from ZUMA Press.